Despres is better than Engelland, Niskanen, and Bortuzzo. Niskanen is a number 5 and Engelland is a number 6, a number 7 on good playoff teams. Bortuzzo isn't better than those 2, but he will be. Niskanen has been making a lot of mistakes lately and every time they try to dump him up with Letang it works for like a game then he turns bad. This is what I would do right now:

Letang - Despres, Pens are 11-4 with Despres playing in the lineup, he's a stud..I would leave this alone for the rest of the year.Orpik - MartinEngelland - Bortuzzo - Nice gritty bottom pair, they don't need to play that much 5v5 a night so it shouldn't be a big problem.Niskanen - decent all around defenseman that can fill in where needed. He should be number 7 at this moment.

Or sit Engelland for a bit. You know, what is he now? 28? He's obviously peaked as a bottom pair. I think Borts could be top 4, but this is screw with Despres/Bortuzzo's development and I don't like it.

After we went down 3-0 to Philly, Despres makes the team as a full time player after that in my opinion. I also remember Bylsma being asked if Despres still had stuff to prove and he said No, he's played enough games last year to know he's going to be here.

But instead he sits. Probably our 3rd/4th best defenseman is in the stands lol..

Letang (playing poor atm, but his partner changes all the time...)MartinOrpik/Despres

columbia wrote:This team has problems that run far deeper than whether Despres or Bortuzzo are in the lineup....it seems like a straw man complaint, to be honest.

Of course it is. So is singling out Kennedy. So is pining over which top six forward they're going to spend all their assets on.

Martin injury is going to open up playing time for him anyway. Then we can see the issue with having two rookies who aren't that good at this point in the lineup. Wouldn't be that big a deal if the other depth was strong but Niskanen and Engelland playing more is also a bad thing.

DelPen wrote:If you won't play them now to get the rookie mistakes out of their systems then I guess you can't throw them in the playoffs together. That's why they both need to be playing right now so you can make that call by the trade deadline.

I said the same thing back in maybe August, but everyone thought I was crazy and said it would never work

DelPen wrote:If you won't play them now to get the rookie mistakes out of their systems then I guess you can't throw them in the playoffs together. That's why they both need to be playing right now so you can make that call by the trade deadline.

I said the same thing back in maybe August, but everyone thought I was crazy and said it would never work

Your proposition had Brian Strait on the first pairing. And 1 person responded to it.